The following day we spent in a pleasure cruise amongst the three hundred and sixty-five Islands, many of them not above an acre in extent—­fancy an island of an acre in extent!—­with a solitary house, a small garden, a red-skinned family, a piggery, and all around clear deep pellucid water.  None of the islands, or islets, rise to any great height, but they all shoot precipitously out of the water, as if the whole group had originally been one huge platform of rock, with numberless grooves subsequently chiselled out in it by art.

We had to wind our way amongst these manifold small channels for two hours, before we reached the gentleman’s house where we had been invited to dine; at length, on turning a corner, with both lateen sails drawing beautifully, we ran bump on a shoal; there was no danger, and knowing that the ’Mudians were capital sailors, I sat still.  Not so Captain K-----, a round plump little homo,--“Shove her off, my boys, shove her off.”  She would not move, and thereupon he, in a fever of gallantry, jumped overboard up to the waist in full fig; and one of the men following his example, we were soon afloat.  The ladies applauded, and the captain sat in his wet breeks for the rest of the voyage, in all the consciousness of being considered a hero.  Ducks and onions are the grand staple of Bermuda, but there was a fearful dearth of both at the time I speak of—­a knot of young West India merchants, who, with heavy purses and large credits on England, had at this time domiciled themselves in St. George’s, to batten on the spoils of poor Jonathan, having monopolised all the good things of the place.  I happened to be acquainted with one of them, and thereby had less reason to complain; but many a poor fellow, sent ashore on duty, had to put up with but Lenten fare at the taverns.  At length, having refitted, we sailed in company with the Rayo frigate, with a convoy of three transports, freighted with a regiment for New Orleans, and several merchantmen for the West Indies.

“The still vexed Bermoothes”—­I arrived at them in a gale of wind, and I sailed from them in a gale of wind.  What the climate may be in the summer I don’t know; but during the time I was there it was one storm after another.

We sailed in the evening with the moon at full, and the wind at west-north-west.  So soon as we got from under the lee of the land the breeze struck us, and it came on to blow like thunder, so that we were all soon reduced to our storm staysails; and there we were, transports, merchantmen, and men-of-war, rising on the mountainous billows one moment, and the next losing sight of everything but the water and sky in the deep trough of the sea, while the seething foam was blown over us in showers from the curling manes of the roaring waves.  But overhead, all this while, it was as clear as a lovely winter moon could make it, and the stars shone brightly in the deep blue sky; there was not even a thin fleecy shred of cloud racking across the moon’s disc.  Oh, the glories of a northwester!